Life Changing Apps: Health and Fitness

April 18th, 2013 | Posted by Quixey in Life-Changing Apps - (1 Comments)

As we all know, sometimes it’s difficult to find motivation to exercise. There’s simply no arguing with the facts — the couch is just a more comfortable place. Luckily for us, there are apps that can help us from sinking too far in! Here are a few of our favorites for being active and keeping a healthy lifestyle:

Fitbit

Fitbit, available on iOS and Android, allows users to track food intake, activity, weight, water, sleep, and most importantly, see the big picture when it comes to how daily choices affect your health. The app connects to a variety of wireless trackers, as well as an Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale. Wearing one of the wireless trackers allows you to track your activity and sleep patterns, while the Smart Scale helps you monitor your weight and set goals. All the devices connect to the Fitbit mobile app to provide you with reports on your activity and areas of need with respect to health.

Nike+ FuelBand

The Nike+ FuelBand connects with an iOS app to provide users with a gamified method of staying on top of their fitness. Similar to Fitbit, it comes in a wearable wristband that tracks your daily activity, including running, walking, dancing, and all sorts of daily activities. Opening the app allows you to see your progress and receive achievements and rewards as you do more. It also connects through Facebook, Twitter, and Path, allowing users to easily share their accomplishments and encourage better fitness amongst friends and family.

Amiigo

Amiigo combines a tracking wristband and shoe clip with its Android or iOS mobile app to monitor exactly what kind of activity the wearer is doing. For example, the sensors can identify whether you’re using the elliptical, running, swimming, doing bicep curls, squats. etc. Amiigo correlates these activities with heart rate and blood oxygen saturation to give a complete physiological breakdown of your activities. Overall, Amiigo can identify and track hundreds of different exercises, as well as reps, intensity, and more.

Have you come across any other great fitness apps? If so, we’d love to hear about them! Tweet at @Quixey to let us know!

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Life Changing Apps: Language Preservation

January 10th, 2013 | Posted by Quixey in Life-Changing Apps - (0 Comments)

There are over 6,900 spoken languages in the world. Sadly, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) estimates that by 2100, over half of them will be completely extinct due to external forces like military, economic, or educational suppression. Just in the past decade, highly concentrated languages like Aka-Bo and Eyak have gone extinct. While the general consensus around the world is that widespread use of one or a few languages aids in world commerce, this trend severely damages global cultural diversity.

So leave it to technology to find a way to mend the problem.

Created in effort to prevent the extinction of Iwaidja, one of Australia’s 100 endangered languages, “Ma! Iwaidja” is the first mobile app created to preserve an indigenous language. It contains a 1,500-entry Iwaidja-English dictionary, as well as a 450-entry phrase book that users can update.

Iwaidja is spoken by less than 200 people on Croker Island, which lies off the northern coast of Australia. Part of the Minjilang Endangered Languages Publication project, the app capitalizes on the rapid uptake of mobile phone technology in Australian indigenous communities. Croker Island’s community store sells smartphones, and the school has eight iPads with the app installed—making natural data collection much easier.

According to Bruce Birch, coordinator of the project, apps for other endangered aboriginal languages such as Mawng and Kunwinjku are already in the works. The draw of such apps, he says, is that they “increase the involvement of indigenous people whose languages are threatened, without the need for difficult-to-attain levels of computer literacy.”

As UNESCO claims, the deterioration of languages around the world is neither inevitable nor irreversible. “Ma! Iwaidja” is proof of that, and we hope to see more revolutionary, yet intuitive apps follow the same trend in the future.

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Apps for Hurricane Season

October 30th, 2012 | Posted by Quixey in Life-Changing Apps - (0 Comments)

Prior to Hurricane Sandy’s landfall late yesterday, authorities urged citizens all up and down the Atlantic Coast to take shelter, and in many cases, evacuate their homes entirely. Many were unaware of the potentially devastating impact Sandy would have, and at this point still are unsure how best to handle the aftermath of flooding and widespread power outages. Luckily, for those who saved battery power on their smartphones, there are plenty of apps to help get through the damage and confusion.

Apps have the ability to entertain, organize, and inform. But they can also completely revolutionize the way we live our lives. Below are a few apps that can help those in danger of suffering from Hurricane Sandy’s destructive path, especially if they’re experiencing power outages in their area.

Hurricane

This app by the American Red Cross monitors conditions in your area with location-based alerts, providing step-by-step instructions for what to do if cell towers are down and the power is out. It also lets family and friends know you’re safe with customizable alerts compatible with Facebook, Twitter, email, and text. If the lights go out, the Hurricane Toolkit includes a strobe light, flashlight, and audible alert functions. Most importantly, the app allows you to keep an emergency situation under control by detailing how to assemble an emergency kit, find open Red Cross shelters nearby, and prepare food and water if your area is impacted by floods.

Home Inventory

Home Inventory allows you to protect your assets from theft and natural disasters by helping you catalogue all of your valuables in one space. You can enter and view your belongings in category or location mode and add up to nine photos per item, including receipts and other important documents. As soon as your data is entered it automatically synchronizes between your iPhone and the web app, so you can access the data at any time. You also have the option of adding your insurance information and allowing the app to calculate proper insurance coverage so you don’t have to. It’s a crucial app for families who can’t bring all their valuables with them in the event of an evacuation.

CaneCast

This app for iPhone and iPad provides a detailed forecast map that allows you to monitor a storm’s current locations and conditions, as well as view its expected path. In addition to tracking the strength and course of a hurricane, it’s also the only forecast app that gives the latest information about risk of high winds at any location.

Whether you need constant updates on Sandy’s impact to your area, basic survival tools, or help taking care of your most valuable belongings, there are apps to help. Just remember to stay calm, use the resources available to you, and be safe!

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Apps for the On-Demand Economy

October 10th, 2012 | Posted by Quixey in Life-Changing Apps - (0 Comments)

The world demands satisfaction. And it often isn’t willing to wait.

As the pace of everyday life picks up over time, our tolerance for waiting dramatically decreases. With the way our society evolves thanks to faster and faster broadband speeds and an exploding mobile ecosystem, we now find ourselves in the midst of a truly on-demand economy. When we want something, we want it now. And since we’re used to receiving it immediately, we’re starting to get frustrated when that something arrives any later than, well, right now.

With a growing number of people living in such an intense rush every day, developers have taken notice and started crafting apps for the user who doesn’t just want something quick, but expects it. Whether you want to get from point A to point B, are craving a home cooked meal, or need help moving furniture into your apartment, believe it or not, there are apps to help. We’ve come across a few such apps ourselves, and thought we’d share them with you. They might just change your life.

Exec

Ever needed to pick up dry cleaning, buy a present for your mom’s birthday, and assemble your IKEA bookshelf all in the same afternoon, but with no way to take care of it yourself? Well since Siri and other virtual assistants can’t actually help you with physical tasks, Exec is the right place to look. Simply type what you’d like done into the app, such as “pick up my groceries,” and Exec will find you a nearby assistant to help.

Wait. Seriously?

Yes. This actually exists. Once the task is approved, the assistant will call you to receive specific directions. Your card is charged only when the task is complete, at a rate of $25/hour for the assistant’s time. The company is young and currently only operates in San Francisco, but similar services like TaskRabbit are available all over the country.

Munchery

Say it’s been a couple weeks since you had an Exec assistant pick up groceries for you and you need something new to eat. You’re sick of all the restaurants in your neighborhood and even if you had groceries, you know you won’t have time to cook something fancy when you get home. But instead of throwing another TV dinner into the microwave, whip out your smartphone and download Munchery. The app allows users to purchase meals cooked fresh daily by a team of personal chefs. Better yet, the meals can be delivered right to your doorstep. Menus change daily, and each meal includes a detailed description of the ingredients used, as well as a profile of the chef who prepared it. The app currently delivers only to addresses in the San Francisco Bay Area, but they promise the service will be available in many cities across the US soon!

Hotel Tonight

You’re out on the town, having a fun night with your friends, and it’s way too late to use public transit to get home. What can you do to fix this problem—right now? Instead of panicking and bringing down the group mood, download Hotel Tonight, choose your city, and the app will immediately find vacancies in hotels near you. Each option provides you with pictures, a description of the hotel, and its location on a map so you can make your way there as quickly as possible. The night is saved!

So if you’re the type who wishes your dry cleaning was done, your dinner for later taken care of, and a place to crash tonight locked up all by the time you finished reading this post, then check out the above apps. They’ll do the trick.

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Apps for the Developing World

June 14th, 2012 | Posted by Quixey in Life-Changing Apps | Technology Trends | Uncategorized - (0 Comments)

What makes a life-changing app? It should make people’s lives better. It might help children with autism express themselves, encourage us to eat healthier or motivate us to work out more often. Now what if apps could help improve the lives of billions of people in the developing world?

They can, they do and it’s only the beginning.

Mobile phones are changing the international development space. There are over 5 billion wireless subscribers worldwide, of which over 70% live in low- and middle-income countries. In some places, more people have wireless service than access to the electrical grid or other traditional infrastructure systems. NGOs and private companies alike have already begun to leverage mobile phones to improve the quality of life for people in developing nations — a 2009 study showed a 1.2% GDP increase for every 10% increase in mobile penetration. Banking and healthcare stand out as examples of mobile apps delivering tangible benefits to underserved populations.

M-PESA: Airtime as Currency

More than half the world’s adult population is “unbanked,” meaning they don’t use traditional financial services for savings or transactions. M-PESA is a mobile banking service launched by Vodafone that allows users to send payments to others via SMS. The payments are credited to the recipients account as mobile minutes and can be used up or redeemed for cash at M-PESA agent stations. The service is live in Tanzania, Afghanistan and Kenya, where adoption has reached an estimated twenty-five percent of the population.

mHealth: Mobile Health Services

In some parts of the world, where the doctor to patient ratio approaches 1:20,000, mobile phones can provide potentially life-saving medical information. Some mHealth services provide basic education and awareness information; for example, Text4baby Russia provides free health information to expecting mothers tailored to their baby’s due date. Other mHealth services deliver valuable patient information to local doctors. The South African service SIMpill, a pill bottle with a SIM card, monitors HIV/AIDS treatment compliance by sending a text message when medication is taken. It will also send SMS reminders to patients when they forget to take their prescribed doses.

The Future 

Mobile apps in the developing world are already changing lives, but it’s only the beginning. Most of the apps deployed today are built to leverage SMS technology on feature phones. For most communities, smartphones are prohibitively expensive. However, as they continue to decrease in price, we may be nearing a time when hundreds of millions of people in the developing world gain access to the full app ecosystem available on smartphones.

The opportunities for mobile apps in the developing world are endless. Whether by providing banking services or healthcare information, apps can truly make people’s lives better. Most exciting of all, the great work that’s already being done in this space is just the beginning. We can’t wait to see the next generation of truly life-changing apps for the developing world.

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Life-Changing Apps: Apps for Autism

March 7th, 2012 | Posted by Quixey in Life-Changing Apps - (1 Comments)

Tens of millions of children suffer from autism and related conditions. Many of these complex brain disorders are characterized by difficulties in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors.

Now, some app developers are taking creative approaches to help autistic individuals improve speech, recognize facial expressions and regulate their own behaviors. As part of our Life-Changing Apps series, we highlight three apps aimed at helping Autistic children:

Sosh

Sosh is a mobile app that intends to help individuals with Asperger’s syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder, improve social skills. It focuses on five essential abilities: helping the user relate, relax, reason, regulate and recognize. For example, the Shredder feature allows users to type a troubling thought and virtually shred it to relieve stress. Additionally, the Facial Expressions Gallery helps the user identify emotions by displaying a series of different expressions. Lastly, the Voice Meter tells users if they are speaking at the right volume.


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Smile at Me

Some children with Autism find it difficult to smile at the proper times. Smile at Me teaches children how to react to certain situations by playing a simple game: Players hold the iPhone like a mirror and are shown pictures. A picture may or may not call for a smile. Then, players are asked to form their mouths into the correct shape – to smile or not to smile – based on the picture.

The Smile at Me system of rewards is also special. When players answer correctly, they are rewarded with a star while incorrect answers result in verbal support to try again. After four stars are awarded, the players get to visit a virtual zoo. In the zoo, players interact with animated animals and practice more social skills with virtual friends!


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iAssist Communicator

If your child or someone you know has difficulty communicating, iAssist Communicator is designed for individuals with Autism and other developmental disabilities. This app helps Autistic individuals by incorporating large photos and functional language.


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Autism can be difficult to deal with, but these apps take steps to make that process a little bit easier. If you know someone who has used these apps, we’d be interested in feedback!

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Life-Changing Apps: Fitness

February 18th, 2012 | Posted by Quixey in Life-Changing Apps | Uncategorized - (0 Comments)

One hundred and six… One hundred and seven … One hundred and eight …

We all know how to do a push-up and a crunch, but how do we motivate ourselves to go to the gym? Today, mobile apps are enhancing the fitness industry by providing motivation and rewards for exercising.

As part of our Life-Changing Apps series, we profile three apps that make us want to work out.

GymPact

Need extra motivation to go to the gym? Well, you’re in luck. GymPact pays you to the gym. When you first sign up, you enter your credit card information and you make a pact with yourself. If you miss a day at the gym, you pay. The minimum payment for a missed day at the gym is $5. If you do follow your pact, you receive money via Paypal from the pool paid by the non-exercisers!

FitnessBuilder

Ever wanted a personal trainer but didn’t want to pay a ridiculous price? With FitnessBuilder, you get access to a live personal trainer and exercise physiologist. As if that isn’t awesome enough, you also have access to a library of over 750+ handcrafted workouts designed by fitness trainers. The workouts are designed with a particular goal in mind. You want a six-pack? No problem. Just pull up the appropriate videos, track your progress and ask a trainer any questions you have.

Nexercise

Next, there’s Nexercise. This app “gamifies” working out by rewarding you with points for every 15 minutes of working out. The points are redeemable for prizes. Not only do you get rewarded for going to the gym, you also get points for getting your lazy friends off the couch and to the gym.

Now that you’ve finished reading this post, we hope you get out of your chair, try a fitness app and hit the gym!

Life-Changing Apps: The Food We Eat

September 10th, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in App Trends | Life-Changing Apps - (0 Comments)

The food industry is due for an upgrade and plenty of app developers are coming up with creative solutions.

As part of our “Life-Changing Apps” series we decided to profile the innovative work of app developers and how their work is changing the way we eat. Within just a few years, we’ve seen incredible apps that do everything from analyzing the nutritional value of a product by scanning the barcode to apps that can analyze food through a smartphone photo. And, of course, apps finally exist to help you track down the elusive taco trucks.

Ultimately, all apps are designed to make your life better and to help you solve your every day problems. The apps featured below change the way we eat and help us make better choices.

Fooducate

If you’ve ever found yourself standing in a grocery store comparing products and gleaning little details from the nutrition label there’s finally a solution. Fooducate solves the problem of not knowing what to buy at the grocery store simply by scanning barcodes with your smartphone. It is one of the many apps that leverage barcode data to help you engage with products. With Fooducate, you simply scan a UPC barcode and the app gives you the product information, health ratings, product alternatives and allows you to compare products.

Meal Snap

When we go out to eat it can be hard to keep track of how healthy our meals really are. And if you’ve ever faced the mystery of “what exactly is there in my lunch” there may be a solution that is just a picture away.
Luckily Meal Snap makes it simple to learn what you are eating using the technology already in your pocket. Simply take a photo of your food with your smartphone and Meal Snap will auto-magically detect the nutritional and caloric breakdown. But it doesn’t stop there –  it calculates estimated total calorie counts for each meal and categorizes your food choices into breakfast, lunch and dinner. And, for those who love sharing what you ate, there are plenty of social media sharing options integrated with the app.

Eat St.

Food trucks have been around since the 1800s. Over the past few years we’ve seen a resurgence in interest and nostalgia for the old fashioned food trucks. Now we even have reality TV shows dedicated to food trucks and social media has helped to rebuild their popularity. Food trucks started tweeting, offering check-in deals and making themselves into gourmet destinations.

With all this growth in roaming restaurants a new app, Eat St., has emerged. It helps you find the food trucks and carts in your area of all different food types. The app works by having vendors and users place food trucks on the map and crowd-sourced information from the food truck fans. This app works best in cities with stationary food carts but Eat St. is continuously building and improving their database and adding include new features.
These are just a few of the ways apps have changed the way we eat. We hope you try out some of these apps, they will make your life better and help you live a bit healthier — even at the taco truck.
Share some of your favorite healthy/foodie apps in the comments below.

Life-Changing Apps: Transportation

July 21st, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in Life-Changing Apps - (1 Comments)

Last week, we discussed how apps are transforming healthcare and medicine. Due to your positive feedback, we’ve decided to begin a series on life-changing apps. We will discuss apps that disrupt industries, improve your life, and change how the world works.

This week, we’ll focus on apps that change how you travel.

iBart

iBart was one of the first iPhone transportation apps, one that started a trend. Immediately after the iPhone was released, the developers at Pandav saw the importance of mobile transportation apps and got to work on iBart.

iBart manages your travel on the BART transportation system from anywhere in the San Francisco Bay area. It comes with a trip planner that doesn’t require internet access (so it works in tunnels), station information, scheduled arrivals, a beautifully designed BART map, and service advisories. Pandav has also released apps for Chicago, DC, and more, so be sure to see what they have available for public transportation in your area.

Getaround

Getaround was the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt NYC. It’s a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace – kind of like Airbnb for cars. As a car owner, you rent your car to Getaround users for an hourly fee. If you are borrowing a car, all you need to do is use the Getaround app to unlock the car you are borrowing. You can see all the cars available for rent on a map, or you can search for cars by address.

INRIX Traffic

INRIX Traffic

INRIX Traffic helps you find the fastest route to the places you want to go by helping you avoid traffic. It will show you the best times to leave for your destination, and you can save a set of favorite destinations or preferred routes. If commuting is a big part of your life, installing this app once might show you a route that saves you hours per year.

Taxi Magic

Our office loves Taxi Magic. Enter your location and a pick-up time, and the app will ping a cab in the area to get you. Even better, you can use the app to pay and add a tip at the end of your ride. You’ll also get an email receipt. You need to enter your credit card info and address before you can get started, but once you do, grabbing a cab is easy.

Apps have become an integral part of travel. It’s rare these days to travel for more than a few miles without loading some kind of app. Taking advantage of the best tools available makes travel far easier, whether by helping you worry less, finding you a taxi, or by showing you routes you never knew existed.

We’re always on the lookout for great apps. What transportation apps do you use?

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Life-Changing Apps: Healthcare Industry

July 14th, 2011 | Posted by Quixey in Life-Changing Apps - (1 Comments)

Quixey is built on the idea that apps are powerful. Apps have drastically changed our daily lives, and we’re starting to see them change industries.

Apps are particularly promising in the healthcare and medicine industry. Web and mobile-based tools now exist that can vastly improve your health, or even save your life.

We’ve listed a few of the most interesting apps below – take a look, and perhaps you’ll find something for you.

HeartWise Blood Pressure Tracker

This iPhone app is truly amazing. Enter your data to track your weight, resting heart rate, and blood pressure. The app will use this data to calculate your blood pressure, pulse, and body mass index. Over time the app builds trends to help you monitor your health.

It takes some discipline to continually add data to HeartWise. Even so, this app could be incredibly useful and promising if you build that data entry into your schedule. You can export your data to perform analysis or show your doctor.

Skin Scan

This app is essentially a personal skin cancer prevention system. Just take a picture of your skin, and this app will assess your risk of skin cancer by scanning and analyzing your moles.

You can also track cases over time to analyze their progression, helping you monitor your health between doctor appointments.

AirStrip

AirStrip is one of many apps being used by hospitals. It is designed for doctors to remotely monitor their patients, pulling information from hundreds of different patient monitors and ECG machines. This helps eliminate time delay in the clinical assessment and treatment of patients. The app is accessible anywhere with cellular or Wi-Fi access.

These are just a few examples, but the point is clear: technology is making huge strides towards goals like remote medical diagnosis, real time health monitoring and personalized treatment. On an individual level, these apps have the potential to drastically improve your quality of life. On the industry level, apps could be revolutionary.

We are moving into the era of digital medicine. Each of these apps can replace or augment an entire test or process at the doctors office, saving you time, money, and health. Apps aren’t just mobile games anymore – they’re pieces of technology that change the way you live.

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